CTD profiles taken on the Knorr cruise showed spikes of Chlorophyll deep in the water column.

RV Knorr Science Team

Emily at work

I now believe that Float 48 is now in a stable state on the surface, sending ARGOS fixes and awaiting recovery. We should be able to recover it using the RDF, just like we did 47.

The float started showing file system errors earlier today. These progressed and after 10 write errors, it aborted the mission, blew the bolt (we think) and tried to start the recovery mode program. However, the program load didn't succeed probably because the file system is crashed leaving only the backup ARGOS location system.

The lessons are the usual ones:

Click on the image above for full size.

Courtesy of Mike Sieracki (Bigelow Laboratory) and Tatiana Rynearson (Univ. of Rhode Island).

I am happy to report that both floats are back in the water and working well. They are currently very close to each other, but I expect them to spread apart over the next few weeks. There is no obvious evidence of biofouling on any of the sensors; nor did we see much on float 47 when it was recovered.

Thurs 15-May

• Finished 20 km bow tie survey



• Aborted the Biofloat 47 Deployment when check out test revealed that one (out of three) drogue motors was not working properly. After consultation with PI Eric D'Asaro and float engineer Mike Ohmart in Seattle, we decided to go ahead and deploy with two working motors and a slightly gimpy drogue.

News from the Knorr

For the last 6 days, the float has been following an anticyclonic (clockwise) eddy. In an effort to resolve smaller scales of variability in this eddy, we are carrying out a number of small scale surveys. We completed a 20 km-per-side bow tie (13 stations) on Monday-Tuesday and a 40 km-wide Zig Zag (7 m stations) on Tues-Wed. We are currently carrying out another 20 km bow tie.

Combined with the the ship's underway data, float, glider and satellite observations paint an amazing picture of small scale variability in space, time and physiology:\.